The Helpers

Shauna and the kids are in Mexico today, treating themselves to a week at a resort. Apparently, the kids will go to great lengths to escape our requests for their help in the garden. It is the time of year to pull weeds that survived the winter, and we have asked for their assistance twice already.

On the last Saturday in April, JJ came by on his own to help with the front patch.

Nine days later, on a much warner day, they both came early for family dinner to work on the backyard before the meal. 

Surprising Colour

On Friday evening, we did what many did and hit the night roads to look for the aurora. I had a spot picked out on a farm on the edge of town. I thought to pull in just off the road and get a pretty good northern and eastern view. I thought to just just off the road and not really onto private property, but it would be enough.

But two cars beat me to it, and they pulled right in, well onto the property. So, I kept driving and ended up a very rural road about 8km from home. Our town is in the bottom left of the map ↓ and there's a thumbnail of the aurora where we stopped to take pictures. You can see that it's all green out thataway: a mixture of forest and fields and few humans. We couldn't see green in the dark, of course, so it was a slow trip down that dark, rural road, but thankfully not a long one.

As we drove along, there were trees and bushes on the left side of the road, which obscured the northern view,  but I eventually found a cleared spot. Of course, there was nothing but cloud to see. Oh well.

However, there seemed to be something happening in the eastern sky. There were streaks going overhead and a wee bit of shimmering, but it was very dull and colourless.

However, when Sue pulled out her phone, behold! there was colour.

I didn't know this then, but camera sensors see a greater colour range than we do, especially at night. It does seem odd because humans see a much larger range of light than cameras see: light but not colour. Go figure.

Eventually, I also pulled out my camera, but the show was over by then, or at least the shimmering part was over. However, the sensor still picked up a ton of colour. I tried to at least keep the light level true to what we were seeing, for it was pretty dark.

I took a photo looking along the dark road ↓ that we would have to drive along to get out of the farm field territory.

This always happens on Blogger. On my high res photos in my workflow,
I can see the road more clearly.

I'm now having a second thought, and I'll show you one of my first photos ↓ SOOC, no editing. Crazy exposure on a dark night, eh? The previous two photos show the reality better, but the next one was my first attempt.

It was a weird experience to see that light to come out of a dark and what seemed to our eyes, a colourless sky.

That's ↑ the story, but I have a few more photos to show. 

I used my headlamp to light up the sign.

That ↑ was a phone shot by me. This ↓ is a phone shot by Sue of me later setting up my big camera on the tripod.

Sue did a composite of some of her photos.

That colour was very unexpected. I thought that we were wasting our time until Sue took the first photo with her phone.

Mothers I Have Known

We get old-fashioned snail mail in which people are asking for our money. We also have mail from the people who demand our money for goods received or for services rendered.

Either way, I am more than likely to save the back of the envelopes and to use them for my shopping lists. 

Sue has told me that this making-of-lists on the backs of envelopes is what my mother did. That memory of her doing this had never really soaked into my brain, but now that I've had a think, it does seem vaguely familiar. I only began to do this a few years ago. It's a small thing, for I have always recycled, but I now add reusing to the recycling.

Therefore, although I don't think that I learned to write lists on envelopes from her, we do seem to share the same sort of practical parsimony in our DNA. :)

I am not sure what other traits that I inherited from mom, for I seem to be more like my dad. However, she certainly did numbers better than Dad, for I remember being impressed by how well she did her budgetting sums, even when she well into her eighties. I think she even did them more efficiently than I, and I am not too shabby at that sort of thing.

So that is a bit of a nod to my mother who has been gone for 21 years already.

On this day, I also acknowledge the mother of my children who is, of course, the grandmother to Sha's kids. I made this little card for her. I have changed my tactic and just created a one-sided card. I think I might permanently move on from the folded, inside and outside cards that I have been creating for years. Besides, I can print this on good photo paper rather than card stock.

Once upon a time, and only once if I recall correctly, we went out for Mother's Day breakfast. We vowed never to do that again. However, a few days ago on a fabulous spring day, we took a shawarma to a spot by the river behind town hall. Both the day and food were delicious, and that little outing will have to suffice for now.

Meanwhile, Sha and the kids are off for a week at a Mexican resort, but Danica dropped by on Friday with a little gift for Grandma: s necklace and a prepaid coffee card. 

Yesterday, Sha and JJ stopped with two gorgeous, potted guinea impatiens for the garden.

Caturday 61: Limping Down for Breakfast

Cat informed me that it was time to trundle down the stairs for breakfast. Indeed, I usually relent and take her down before I would otherwise seek my own morning nourishment.

Sue grabbed her phone and snapped some photos: me in my ratter-tatter old shirt*, and Lacey in her white socks. The lighting was horrific, so I converted to b&w.

Maybe Sue will try a video someday; it might capture the dual limping better than static photos do.

* Once tees, whether long or short sleeve, are too ratty to wear outdoors, I may continue to wear them as pyjamas for quite some time.

The Other Photos

As the season changes, the photos are coming fast and furious these days. Today, I present a few that didn't seem to fit into recent posts.

On the day that I was focusing on the greening, I snagged this photo of a greening tree on the right and a bloke and his dog emerging from under the old railway underpass. Bonus: he was earing red.

Later that morning, I photographed two images around the museum garden while Sue was taking her own pics somewhere else on the premises. You have seen those gnarly branches previously in a different sort of photo. Then I saw the flower photo op: one reddish tulip hovering over the blue grape hyacinths.

At home one day, I played around with ICM (Intentional Camera Movement)  on the lilac bush. Aside from a bit of a crop, the first image is close to SOOC (Straight Out of the Camera). The second photo was opposite as I applied various textures and filters to the image.

We are loaded with dandelions everywhere. Indeed, as much as we dislike them taking over our lawns, blankets of dandelions here and there on roadsides and elsewhere do look pretty darn good.  I haven't felt much like getting down to their level, but I found two low, macro photos from a few years ago.

Guitars Reimagined

Back on April 19, I posted Coffee and Guitars with this ↓ image as the lead photo.

Blogging, for me, is largely about keeping up with what is going on in this life of mine, so I try to develop a daily photo to a presentable level and then post it, probably on the next day. So, I don't always take the time to consider it deeply. In this case ↑ it took me a little nudging to get it to this point, and I was happy enough with it at the time.

However, in the fullness of time, when I came across the image again, I wasn't all that happy with it. For one thing the lines are a little wonky. Look at the dark line of bricks around top part of the guitars, and you'll see that it isn't level. I also felt that the photo was a little dull and needed a little more contrast and saturation. I also said in that post that if I were return to the cafe, I'd like to ask the owners if I could, temporarily, remove the plant. Mary commented that perhaps I could do this in Photoshop. Well, duh! Why didn't I think of that? I do have and use Photoshop after all.

So, I set about to do all of those things, and this is the result, which I think is a stronger image. 

It's a little less true to the reality that I saw with my eyes, especially the bright orange of the third guitar, but the farther you get away from what you actually saw, I think the more you just care about the image itself. By the way, when I write 'you' of course I really mean I.

And as I did before in the original post, I created a mono version, which, as you know, I often do.

Happy with both new iterations, I posted them to my FB group. But then new thoughts arose from the murkiness of my gray matter.

I realized that three elements represent a better compositional number than four. There's just something about an odd number in an image. Since I was never pleased with the left guitar, which was greatly affected by the strong window light, I decided that it should become the casualty. It is also a very different type of guitar  (a dobro) than the others.

As I was considering that, I decided that the piano bugged me too. It's only partly present, and it is so close to the guitars that I think it threw the balance of the photo off.

So this ↓ is what I did. It's a simple image with just the three guitars, the wall, and no distractions. It isn't perfect, but I think it's good enough that I might even consider printing it.

Whether I print it or not, as far as processing goes, I think I can let it rest now.

Unless I go back to the cafe and try again from scratch.

I Have Become That Guy

For better or for worse, I have become that guy. 

That guy who stops mowing at the edge of his neighbour's half, when it wouldn't take much more effort to mow it all.

My half, which is much much less that half the whole lawn is the mowed (mown) right side.

For almost 19 years, I have been mowing the whole thing. When we first moved here, the guy on the left was somewhat compromised, so of course I did it all. Happily.

When he moved out, a landlord purchased the property as an investment. He first rented to young males who, as decent as they otherwise might be, were not about to keep up appearances. So, I continued to take care of both halves. No problem.

Next, the almost-slum-landlord rented to druggies, and AC continued to mow because there was no alternative.

When miserable landlord finally evicted the druggies, the place was in such bad condition that it sat vacant for three years while he worked off and on at refurbishing the house.

The next and last tenant, for now, actually did her share, especially last year when I wasn't doing so well.

But now she is gone, and the property once again sits vacant while the landlord does this, that and the other thing before he rents it out again or perhaps even sells. Who knows what the heck his plans might be? I hope he sells because he exhibits no interest in being a good landlord who has any interest in assisting his tenants if any bits of maintenance are required.

The guy is a misery. He's been  nasty to us and others in the neighbourhood. When the fence between him and his other neighbour blew down in the derecho two years ago, he refused to contribute to the cost of putting up a new one, even though the neighbour was willing to do all of the labour.

So, AC here is very reluctant assist him in any way and to do his work for him. Mind you, I know that I will probably eventually break down and do it for appearances sake because he won't be rushing over with his lawnmower.

But for the present, I am being extremely petty and am on strike.